With all of those thoughts swirling in my mind I decided I had stayed up too late and it was time for me to crash for the night. Now normally, I throw up some kind of away message that reflects how the day had been, and more often than not it is some kind of song lyric by some band or artist I like that just so happens to have written something similar to how I feel at the moment. If all of that fails, I will often resort to my “standard sleep” message from a now-defunct band called Races to April. While the snippet of “Let our dreams remind us of a life we want” could possibly apply here, it wasn’t all that needed to be said. And although many songs have been written about panic, grief, and tragedy, there was absolutely nothing that came to my mind.

In the end, I just posted “No lyrics have been penned, nor poems composed, nor words written that can adequately sum up today.”

In that moment it dawned on me that, for all of my love for music, it really doesn’t help much. Now when I think of all the times that I’ve heard little scenesters say things like: “Punk rock saved my life,” I now want to scream. If punk rock can really save lives then maybe one of the victims should have just thrown a bunch of shitty Panic! At the Disco CDs at Cho Seung-Hui and maybe he would have went away. On this, an indie music site where we often express our love for our music we hold so dear, I’m going to proclaim that songs, lyrics, hymns, and all of those books of “inspirational quotes,” are all failed attempts at trying to change your state of mind in instances like this.

For me, I adore music. Loud music, local music, indie music, Appalachian hill music, thrash metal music, jug band music, acoustic music, piano music, orchestral music, choral music, and any and all other types of music. Doesn’t matter. I’ll usually dig it (sans the All American Rejects.) I love to play music too, although not nearly as much as I once did. As passionately as I feel about my music, I haven’t listened to anything since Monday morning. Not a single MP3. No CD. I’ve even turned off the radio in my vehicle, enveloping myself in silence as I’m driving back and forth between my apartment, campus, and friends' places. There’s just no music that I want to listen to right now. The closest thing to music that I’ve heard was my upstairs neighbor when he turned on his guitar shortly after a convocation meeting (the same one that George W Bush spoke.) During the five minutes or so of playing, all that I could distinguish was a little bit of Green Day before he abruptly stopped. Apparently playing music helps about as much as listening to it.

And although music can therapeutic in some instances, and often it can be helpful, inspiring, or just plain enjoyable, but in the end it’s only music.

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